“Hell,” said Jimmie, laconically.
Douglas punched holes in the turf, and his lips tightened. He said;
“I tolt you not to come to Mains. We got to go back after cattle next week. I was up with the boss this mornin’. He guv me the names.”
“An———?”
“An’ you’re one to go, Jimmie.”
Then Jimmie pivotted swiftly, speaking words that Ted Douglas would never have forgiven in another man. But he loved Jimmie.
“I couldn’t stop it,” he said, gravely. “If you’re scared, you must hook it. You’ll have to do your whack of graft here, Jimmie.”
“I don’t mind the ridin’. But if the brutes come chargin’—.Ted—oh, Ted———”
Douglas put his arm round the thin shoulders, and his grave young eyes were dark with pity.
“There’s a bit o’ a mutton-bird’s egg as won’t harden though you boil ’em for a year,” he said. “You’ve had some firin’—is there nothin’ won’t bile the funk out of you, Jimmie?”
But Jimmie looked across the low hills to the smoke-wreaths of the unseen township, and he gave no answer.
The township ran two cemeteries; but the one on the manuka-hill overlooking the river
